The Unsung Young Heroes of Jonglei

The late Dr. Biar Chagai Biar who died alongside the women abd children massacred in Duk-payuel by Murle raiders on November 28, 2017

Our young humanitarians and peace missionaries helplessly witness their unlucky colleagues kicking away their last death throes besides dead cows, dead mothers and fathers with shrinking echoes of shrieking children in the hands of abductors, yet they move on with their unwavering services to the deserted people until their day comes.

They are there, village-bound throughout all the harsh seasons of the year. This generation of unrecognized heroes, having acquired high academic papers in our urban or foreign institutions of learning, still go back to their most desolate part of the world, to extract a Guinea worm-shackled widow or a generation of lost orphans from there.

The most unbelievable thought is that they go there and compete in sharing pictures of their horrors in the heart of the ghost villages with those bragging about their lavage spending in foreign capitals.

In the picture below, I can see Pastor Chol Bol Ajak wading through the waist-hugging floods to go and carry out spiritual and social psycho-therapies in my home area. My heart bleeds as I wish to join him, but I will not be allowed to cross the border back home by the other youth (I call them ‘paytriots’) who think those campaigning or just complaining for their betrayed people are enemies of the state! Our state is no people.

I am only here, a refugee in East Africa, reduced to a role of a news-breaker; in other words, a heart-breaker, on their fate. These seemingly daredevil youths are but heavenly rewarded unsung heroes of our motherland. Pray for them, please.

However, this is the most disappointing thing. As thy wait for the arrival of the SPLM political chorus of ‘towns to the people’, they only see tanks to the people, fire to the villages, and the like. This is followed immediately by chartered helicopters not full of soldiers on reinforcement but single-day political mourners delivering their crocodile (croco-dialed) tears to the survivors of the previous day’s village massacre. This is what breaks the heart of these young men and young women who have donated their precious energy, skills and ultimately their lives to the service of our lost homes.

What is even more disappointing is the incessant, empty wailing of the ‘live’ Facebook sympathizers, who are sons and daughters of this wretched land, from overseas. Such verbal sympathies are a mockery to the innocently deceased and those helplessly handling their burials.

Did I just say that that one was more disappointing? No, nothing is more heartbreaking than an age mate posting only that infamous, matter-of-fact, 3-lettered eulogy: RIP! How on earth can you tell a dead body or soul to ‘rest in peace’ when you have never once visited that destination, hell or heaven? That is why I do not type that damning acronym (RIP). It seems to rip apart the soul and body of the victims, the way I feel it! I mean let us be always taking some action, at least…like typing a full anger in words as I am now doing and as Duot Diing has done in this picture.

Seriously, the ‘RIP’ mourners and their village-visiting MPs (my Kenyan friend calls them ‘Mpigs’) are just short of the status of the human butchers of our people. I mean so because they vividly know the killers of their constituents, don’t they?

As I type this, my heart bleeds and eyes flood for the young professionals like Biar Chagai (Biargreen), who fell alongside the Duk-payuel victims of the perennial Murle narauding predators, just a week after he picked up his life-serving, now life-wasting, job in the bushes of that once sweet homeland.

I cannot conclude this today. I can only usher you into the testimony of a cattle camp missionary, Rev. John Chol Bol Ajak, whom I left while he was preaching peace and love deep in Jonglei jungles 5 years ago, having abandoned his job in Yei. On seeing his missed call on my Facebook Messenger at 4AM this night, a call that was missed a day before on the very day I received a similar distress call from Arem Kurjil from the same village swamps two years ago, I checked and found the following testimony of a John The Baptist in the wet wilderness of Jonglei State, not his own homestead of Jonglei village in Pakeer.

Before I post it, I had to first got up from my bed and salute late Ustaz Mayen Yong of Jalle, Archdeacon Rev. Joseph Mabior Garang of Wernyol, and Biar Chagai that died two days ago among 50 others (mostly women and children) in a hundredth Duk massacre. Name them, please…!

***

CHOL BOL AJAK’S LONELY VOICE IN PA’NGUI CATTLE CAMP

It is my prayer that the lord will keep me and strengthen my heart not to give up the little contribution that ACROSS through me is offering to Jonglei Communities.

Those who love me, do warn me to be extra careful and conscious about my security, but my insistence does not prove them wrong, it is the burden of my nation and the motto of my organization that give me the enthusiast sacrifice to keep pressing on.

What a joyous moment to conduct the training while putting on underwear after crossing tge deepest stream to Pangui cattle camp and again to Makol-Chuei were I met the courageous folks, full of love for their ancestral land and being guided by this patriotic contract with their land:

“We must not leave our ancestral land, because we may not find such a wonderful place of our own anywhere else! Of course, if we run🏃 away from it, it will also be difficult for our fellow brothers and sisters to come back home and rebuild it. Therefore, we may sacrificially stay on the land and the spirit of this (God) land will mercifully take cover for us.”

Pray for Rev. Daniel Garang Ayuen, executive Chief, women, children and the youth of this area.

YOU’RE WELL? COME!

Dear Ready Reader, Since it is my belief that a good reader is a good leader, I cordially welcome and encourage you to explore my literal mind and exploit my literary mine in this poetic wordware. I hope you are not that pessimistic critic – not a somber leader but a sober reader – who is ever ready to give me their unique critiques on my Pennique techniques; just as my previous readers had with me as their text collector (or corrector and connector) of news, views, interviews, reviews, overviews, previews, purviews, and all the free views expressed in the process of my rioting by writing when my nascent nation is trudging through her era of error. To be Pennically jealous and Penniquely zealous, just as I would not want Juba defined and designed with Sheik Zubeir’s architecture, I would not want my pages pasted and passages plastered with Shakespeare’s literature; and neither would I want my messages massaged with Achebe’s achievers flavours, nor my torturous tales tailored with Tutuola's tutorials. Yet again, if this is not understandable – lo, we go!— (From Preface to my poetry book (manuscript, 'The Black Christs of Africa'

Jon Pen

CALLOUS CALLOUT? Well, here is another exercise of excuse. As I put it in one of my blogs on our Independence Day: Too much culture of leading with too little culture of reading is eminently going to murder the ‘baby nation’ at its infancy. During the times of conflict as such, two features are wrongly prominent; rude war literature and crude war economy. Either of these always delays, and almost slays this blog and 'The Black Christs of Africa'— the book and its sequels. Lo we go…! (From Preface to 'The Black Christs of Africa' (manuscript)

Pennavatar

However, what I found out during my six years of a hide-and-seek game with a 'real publisher of books' was but a real publisher of names; of names of those who have already published books. Since I did not have any name, yet, to be published and sold, I just landed on an e-printer and a printer handy, to me, the real publisher of words. In the truest sense of these words, this (Master Text Collector Ltd.) is the real publisher of books; one who looks at the book of a writer and not the writer of a book. Therefore, if I were the president of a ‘Republic of Literatia’, I would make that a decree to publish not the literary pedigree but the literary degree in a very mannered script of every manuscript. Lo, we go…!

Textleak

ABOUTLEAKS:
Of my style as from my works of poetry:

"Well, there is one fact I have to admit from their cynicism, but omit from my Pennicism and commit to our criticism as we trudge along in this world of invention. The fact is, if my work is unconventional, then it is because I did not attend that Literary Convention hosted by patrons and matrons of an ‘Art Convent’– in case of any – during those days when God created the World by the Word in the ‘Universe of Artitecture’. So spare me this deliberate circumvention for my own literary convention conducted in a series of serious conferences only within the circumference of my upper room, call it, Head Hall. Lo, we go…!
So here is another exercise of excuse. As I put it in one of my blogs on our Independence Day: Too much culture of leading with too little culture of reading is eminently going to murder the ‘baby nation’ at its infancy. During the times of conflict as such, two features are wrongly prominent; rude war literature and crude war economy. Either of these always delays, and almost slays, The Black Christs of Africa— this book and its sequels. Lo we go…! "